


mary's room

by ThatWeirdGuyInTheBushes



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Jack Manifold Needs A Hug, January 26th, Niki | Nihachu Needs a Hug, Niki | Nihachu-centric, Past Character Death, Unreliable Narrator, she's going through a villain arc alright, the nukes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-11 23:41:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29375844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatWeirdGuyInTheBushes/pseuds/ThatWeirdGuyInTheBushes
Summary: "Mary's Room is a thought experiment about a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and had acquired all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see colour. What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room? Will she learn anything or not?"-In which Niki leads a boy to his doom, leaves her black and white world at the doorstep, and reflects.
Relationships: Cara | CaptainPuffy & Niki | Nihachu, Jack Manifold & Niki | Nihachu, Niki | Nihachu & Wilbur Soot
Comments: 5
Kudos: 70





	mary's room

"Do you remember Wilbur?" Tommy asks.

"Yes," she replies, and that doesn't even begin to describe it. She _remembers_ Wilbur. Her best friend. The one who took her by the arm and gave her the tour and was always just a little too loud when he got excited. He had intertwined their hands that first night, spoke of beauty. Spoke of greatness. Spoke of things with new names and life and love and all of the things they would do.

Wilbur had musician's hands, writer's hands, not a general's. She was relieved when he told her he would no longer use them wrong.

Wilbur had wrapped their fingers together, that night, and said "Niki, things are going to change. We've got a bright future ahead of us."

The first time she thought about that, after the day he ruined it, was when she was digging through the rubble. Her fingers cracked and bleeding, every muscle sore, she swallowed rusty spit and thought _well at least it looked bright, from where he stood._ And she almost lost herself to laughter, then, only stopped by Fundy beside her.

She's glad she didn't. If she ever really laughs again, she knows she'll cry.

Niki worries her lip between her teeth, pulling at the skin on it. There's a thrumming in the back of her eyes. The pain is guilty. It's like that story Wilbur used to rattle on about, where the murderer lost his mind because he could hear the heart under his floorboards. That was in the later parts when he'd started spiralling, when he would pace the length of the ravine, keeping everyone awake with his muttering and hums.

“He lost his mind,” Wilbur had told her, fretting at his nails until blood pooled at the beds. “He buried the man beneath the floorboards and he could _hear it,_ Niki. He went mad from the noise.”

Tommy was a heavy sleeper. By the time Niki arrived in Pogtopia, he was not. There is no heartbeat, but the steady clicking of Wilbur’s pocket watch in her coat is good enough.

She shakes her head like the stray thoughts are cobwebs. No sympathy for him. Not after what he's done. All Niki has to do is think about his question again, and she tops up on rage.

Tommy has soldiers hands. Calloused and scar-spotted but most importantly _destructive._ He doesn’t have to mean it, even though she knows he does. He leaves ruin in his footsteps.

Niki looks down at her own hands, flexes her fingers, takes note of a papercut she hadn't seen before. _You have artist’s hands,_ Puffy said, slipping the promise ring on. She had smiled so brightly. Puffy didn't want to see anyone get hurt. Puffy's violence was all performative, all gusto and young knighthood. She had never raised her sword against someone who hadn’t raised theirs first.

Niki wraps her hands around her stomach, nausea creeping up inside. Puffy would never do this. The old Niki would have never done this. Niki of L'Manberg, Niki of two months ago wouldn't have dreamed of it.

But she is not the Niki of L'Manberg or the Niki of old or the Niki of two months ago. She is the Niki of now, January twenty-sixth, the one with no home or allegiance, no hand to grab hers, no bright future.

Tommy is only sixteen, but Niki and Jack are hardly older.

Jack has hands that move too much. Fiddles with everything. Long fingers, not quite for pianos, not quite for machines or poetry. He's good at handshakes, she will give him. Good at signing away their souls.

Jack had come crawling back from the nether with burn scars in the outline of his armour cracks. That was Tommy's fault, too. He had woken up sobbing, he told her, in a quiet moment of weakness she wouldn’t have guessed him capable of.

Jack looked death in the face and said: “'m not done yet.” She hates him for that, sometimes, hate that he gets to be so much nothing and everything, have so much power and yet so little. Hates him for not being _stuck._

Jack always laughs like he knows something she doesn't.

_Bright future, Will,_ she thinks, stepping over another log. That was Niki. Ever the optimist.

She wondered what Eret would have said, to hear her echo their words that day. She wasn't even there when he betrayed L'Manberg. But everyone got around to those words eventually, whether they wanted it or not. Or at least, the three of them had, and the stench of them all will linger in the air for decades to come. She wonders if the smoke she left tastes any different than Dream’s.

Niki squares her shoulders. No turning back now. She flexes her fingers. She doesn't know how Puffy looked at those and saw an artist. But that was Niki of a few months ago. She wasn't sure that she'd recognize _herself_ back then.

Niki doesn't believe in the gods, but she knows that if they are real, she is going to Hell for this. She hopes Wilbur has saved her a spot. She hopes Tommy is on the other side of it, far away from her.

She pulls out her pocket watch and remembers that first arrival. Wilbur had tossed it to her off-handedly like it meant nothing because it did, and now it is _everything._ It is the last thing she is ever going to see.

She gives a mocking salute. _The future is bright._

**Author's Note:**

> stan niki nihachu and subscribe


End file.
